


Stretch

by draculard



Category: Us (Movie 2019)
Genre: Ballet, Dubious Consent, F/F, Oral Sex, Painful Sex, Selfcest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-12 06:51:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19941994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: Adelaide's never been able to loosen up, even in ballet.





	Stretch

It’s important to warm up first. Adelaide’s ballet teacher is an immigrant from Belarus, and that’s what she always says, her accent thick around the consonants of the word she belts at the beginning of every session:

“ _Stretch!_ ”

Adelaide hates stretching. She’s never as flexible as she wants to be, even before two long hours of ~~grueling torture~~ dance. She can’t get her legs straight for the standing second position. Her knees bend against her will; her thighs tremble and shake.

The other girls keep their backs straight, their limbs long and steady. They give her sidelong glances. They whisper things behind her back.

_What’s wrong with her? She did fine in gymnastics last year._

_She used to be great at this stuff._

_It’s like she’s forgotten how to loosen up._

* * *

Red adores nothing more than that delicious strain in her muscles when she stretches. It’s almost — _almost_ — better than the dance itself. She loves the ache that makes her legs feel like they’re going to melt. She loves the soft echo of pain in her arms and shoulders.

Afterward, she feels so loose and powerful. She stretches before dance; she stretches after. She stretches when she wakes up every day; she stretches before she goes to sleep. She can feel the other inmates watching her and she seems to feed on it; she wants their intense, furtive stares. She wants their curiosity.

She lifts her leg above her head and marvels at the familiar searing pain that tears its way up her thigh. Her leg is straight and steady. 

She arranges herself on the cold stone floor for the butterfly stretch and feels her hip bones pop and squeak in a way that makes her smile. 

She tucks her arms back behind the base of her skull and feels the tugging sensation in her shoulders, like some invisible surgeon is dissecting her, his scalpel slicing through her muscles with practiced ease.

Afterward, her limbs all feel like air.

* * *

“Stretch,” Red says in that terrible, croaking voice, but Adelaide is so paralyzed by fear that she _can’t,_ she can’t move, she can’t do anything. She can only lie there, every muscle stiff with tension, while Red moves her long, slim fingers over the buttons on Adelaide’s blouse.

 _This will feel so much better if you relax,_ Adelaide tells herself, and part of her hears it in Red’s evil croak, but the other part hears it in the thick, Belarussian accent of her childhood ballet teacher. 

She feels Red’s hands on her arms, on her waist, on her thighs. Kneading the muscles, coaxing them to relax, to loosen up, to stretch.

Caressing them. Feeling Adelaide’s warm, soft skin. Gentle fingers just barely brushing the inside of her thigh; cool, familiar lips following them down.

When Red pushes Adelaide’s legs back, she feels her hip bones grinding against each other, an unpleasant, jarring sensation in the midst of all this—

All this—

Red’s hands have found Adelaide’s wrists and pinned them down, and Red’s lips have found Adelaide’s neck, and she can feel bare breasts pressing against hers, the air cool, their skin hot.

She should have stretched first, she thinks, eyeing Red’s limber, graceful legs, the effortless way she straddles Adelaide. She tries to fight it; her wrists squirm in Red’s grasp; her hips buck against Red’s, trying to displace her. But nothing she does seems to work, and suddenly she’s twelve again, watching all the other girls move with such grace and skill, watching them complete moves that seem so foreign and clunky on her body.

Red moves over her with such ease, like she’s done this a thousand times, like every step of her life has led her to this. Like she has no clue how much it hurts when she pins Adelaide’s legs back.

 _Christ, I should have stretched first,_ Adelaide thinks.

It’s important to warm up.


End file.
